If you whether as a company or through lawyers deploy the "We do not recognise..." line, you are disrespecting and degrading peoples' lived experiences.
That is not the attitude or approach I would ever have expected from a supposedly ethical organisation like the Co-op,
And the 35 word sentence without full stop or breath from the Co-op spokesperson sounds like something I'd expect to hear from Gus Hedges in Drop The Dead Donkey.